Jon Jones has produced the ‘highest-grossing commercial PPV’ for the UFC in the past 12 months.
The heavyweight champion, Jon Jones is being credited for helping build UFC 285 into the biggest selling card of the past year for the ppromotion.
It was on Saturday, March 4th at the T-Mobile Arena facility in Paradise, Nevada where UFC 285 took place. Headlining the event was a title fight between Jon Jones (27-1 MMA) and Ciryl Gane (11-2 MMA). In front of a sellout crowd, Jon ‘Bones’ Jones defeated ‘Bon Gamin’ by submission at 2:04 of round 1.
Endeavor, parent company to the UFC reported their first quarter results for 2023.
Endeavor CFO, Jason Lublin, spoke during an investor call yesterday, advising:
“At UFC, we continued to deliver more record-breaking events across the globe. UFC 284 in Perth was Australia’s highest-grossing event of any kind and UFC 285 in Las Vegas was UFC’s highest-grossing commercial pay-per-view event within the past 12 months.”
Continuing, Lublin said:
“Additionally, UFC 286 in London was the highest-grossing event in O2 Arena history.”
UFC 284, which took place in February of this year, headlined Islam Makhachev (24-1 MMA) vs Alexander Volkanovski (25-2 MMA) in a lightweight title bout. It was to be Makhachev defeating Volkanovski via unanimous decision.
UFC 286, on Saturday, March 18th, 2023, saw Kamaru Usman (20-3 MMA) vs Leon Edwards (21-3 MMA) in the main event welterweight battle. It was to be Edwards who defeated Usman via majority decision, retaining the welterweight belt.
Riding high since the pandemic, the UFC has sold out 36 of 38 live shows.
First quarter results for 2023 show Endeavor’s owned sports properties, led by the UFC, reporting a revenue of $353.3 million, which is 19 percent higher than first quarter results of 2022.
Endeavor announced in April that it would merge the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) with Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) to create a $21.4 billion live sports and entertainment company. The new UFC-WWE merger is slated to go public later this year.
What do you think of Endeavor’s first quarter results? Are you looking forward to the UFC-WWE merger?
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